Simple and reconfigured single-sideband OFDM RoF system.

We propose a simple and reconfigured dispersion-tolerant single sideband (SSB) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radio over fiber (RoF) system enabled by digital signal processing (DSP), one in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator and direct-detection. The generated radio frequency (RF) is based on DSP and the frequency can be flexibly adjusted, which can be employed in the future software-defined radio access network (RAN). Based on our proposed system, we have experimentally demonstrated 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) 21.87-Gb/s 21-GHz and 38-GHz SSB-OFDM RoF signal generation and transmission over 80-km single-mode fiber (SMF), respectively.